


Ruby Red

by octopus_fool



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Body Horror, Gen, Horror, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-10
Updated: 2019-03-10
Packaged: 2019-11-15 00:15:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18062915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/octopus_fool/pseuds/octopus_fool
Summary: Ruby had always been fascinated by the colour red. She wished for clothes of the most beautiful vibrant shade. But wishes have consequences...





	Ruby Red

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the following prompts of the B2MEM Bingo: March 7: B11 – Madder (Card 25 - Botany), Ladybug (Card 30 - Color Burst 1 - Red), Body Horror (Card 103 - Horror)

Ruby Proudfoot’s name could not have been chosen more fittingly. She loved the colour red. When she was little, she collected ladybirds and watched them until they flew off, leaving her behind and longing for more colour. She gathered the red petals of roses and watched in disappointment as they wilted and became brown. She could not afford rubies, and everything else that was red soon faded. 

She asked her mother for a red dress, but her mother just sighed. “Red clothes are unlucky. Greens and yellows are good colours and they don’t attract evil.”

When Ruby grew up, she found out the true reason why red clothes were rarely worn. Red clothes were simply hard to come by. Madder root could produce a dull red, but more often than not it produced various oranges, yellows or pinks. Which was what Ruby had to make do with. 

With her bright red lips, Ruby soon drew the attention of various hobbits. The Mayor gained her favour, and before long, a great feast was held and her name changed to Ruby Meadows. 

 

The Mayor loved his wife and tried to do everything to make her happy. It did not come as a surprise when announcements went up that there would be a prize umbrella and an assortment of foods for hobbit who presented the wool with the most beautiful red at the next Free Fair. 

The signs hung in all the villages of the Shire and for a week or two, nobody talked about anything else. While dying clothes was something everyone knew a little about, it was not something most hobbits put a lot of effort into. Basic self-dyed yarns and clothes were cheap and easy to make, for anything more expensive you went to the market. 

This contest, however, woke the ambitions of the hobbits. Travelling dwarf merchants were surprised by the sudden demand in rare red minerals and their supplies quickly ran low. Tubs of red beet juice appeared in front of the smials. Hobbits were seen prodding and collecting tiny insects on oak trees, but there were barely enough around to dye a few skeins of yarn. 

 

Pimpernel Took decided to go with the classic. Madder plants were quickly obtained and she bought a large supply of alum for fixing the colour. While others scrabbled for the red-blooded little insects on the oak trees, Pimpernel picked the galls off the leaves and gathered sheep dung off the meadows. 

The classic recipes were well known. Pimpernel tried them out and confirmed that they produced rather pale, inconsistent results. She experimented with the amounts of the ingredients, with the order in which she added and applied them. Her yarns turned red rather than orange more and more often, but she still wasn’t happy with the results. She wanted perfection, she wanted that prize. 

She spent hours and hours in the Old Took’s library, looking through the old books. She added sumac to her process and irritated the local butcher by ordering large amounts of calf’s blood. The results improved, but Pimpernel still wasn’t happy. 

She continued experimenting, she continued reading. One of the recipes in the books suggested grinding up May bugs and adding them to the concoction with the soda. Pimpernel tried out a few more things and figured out that substituting them with ladybirds, the black ones, not the red ones, gave the wool a particularly shimmering colour. Still, it was not perfect yet.

Pimpernel found an old book in the depths of the library. The writing scrawled across the parchment in almost foreign shapes and it used a rather antiquated form of common speech. It suggested adding several herbs to the different steps of the process. And it suggested substituting the calf’s blood with human blood. Pimpernel sat staring at the text for several moments, pondering the sinister suggestion. Then she shrugged. She would have to wait less than a month before she had some hobbit blood at her easy disposal. 

 

The yarn was a rich, shimmering red. It reminded her of wine, the roses in her garden, the leaves in autumn. The other yarns looked bright in the sunshine of the Free Fair, but none shone and glowed as this particular yarn. As soon as her eyes fell on it, Ruby knew it would win the prize. 

Smiling, she handed Pimpernel Took the prize umbrella and the baskets of food at the award ceremony. She also made sure to put in her order for more red wool, before too many others could do likewise. 

 

Ruby made the wool into a spectacular dress. All heads turned when she passed while wearing it. It shone in the sunshine and glowed in the firelight in the evening. 

New skeins arrived, all the same glowing red. Before long, Ruby had a wide collection of deep red clothes. They left a warm, silky feeling on her skin, one she was quite unused to from wool. 

To her amusement, ladybirds were drawn to her. Ruby smiled and let them crawl across her fingers. Sometimes, she had to remove great clumps of them when she took her clothes out of her closet. Camomile Burrows’ cat followed her around, trying to get hold of the colourful insects. 

The streets and roads of the Shire were soon dotted with hobbits wearing bright red, Ruby Red as they called it in her honour. Ruby supposed she might have been annoyed once that her clothing was no longer as unique, but instead, she felt proud that the fashion she had initiated was spreading. 

 

She asked Pimpernel Took once why she was still wearing greens and yellows, when she had all the brilliant reds at her disposal. 

Pimpernel Took just shrugged and laughed. “Call me a traditionalist. Red just wouldn’t be very practical if an adventure came calling. And I need all the dye I have to meet the demands. Some of the ingredients are not easy to come by, I already have enough trouble as it is.”

 

Ruby had an itch. A rather persistent one at that. She had spread a salve on it the previous night, but the area on her lower arm was still raised and red. She tried to ignore it, trying to distract herself with knitting. 

Absentmindedly, Ruby raised her hand and scratched at the itch. She paused. Had she still had wool in her hand when scratching herself? Because it felt like there was a thread of wool under her fingers. She looked at it and froze. A thread was coming loose from her skin, bright red like the wool she was wearing. With horrified fascination, she picked at it. It unravelled from previously healthy skin, but there was no blood.

Ruby covered it up and tried to forget about it, throwing herself into her daily household chores. Another itchy welt sprung up on her leg. Ruby did everything not to scratch at it. Her mind went blank from terror every time her mind even brushed against the thought. 

 

She said nothing over dinner, serving Willibald potato soup. She listened to his account of the day, going into great detail about the mayoring business and the gossip about Tom Nodds disappearing over in Bree, not six months after his father had disappeared. Ruby made sure to nod at all the right places.

“Wait a moment, Ruby, you have a bit of yarn hanging out of your sleeve,” Willibald said, reaching out a hand.

“Don’t!” Ruby yelped, jerking her arm away.

It was too late. Willibald had already taken a hold of the thread and her motion did the rest. Ruby’s arm unravelled, turning into red yarn all the way up to the shoulder and down to her hand. Only one finger lay amidst the tangle of yarn. She tried moving it and it twitched feebly. Her stomach churned unpleasantly at the sight and she averted her eyes, looking at Willibald instead.

Willibald stood there frozen, staring at the yarn still in his hand. Uncomprehending, he blinked back and forth between the yarn and Ruby.

“Please don’t pull,” Ruby said, her voice little more than a croak.

Very slowly, Willibald lowered his hand and let go of the wool. He took one last look at his wife and bolted. Ruby could hear him noisily emptying his stomach into the rose bushes before the garden gate clanked shut. Then there was only silence. 

Ruby knelt down. She gathered up the yarn and rolled it up as well as she could with one hand. Somewhere along the line, it slipped from her hand and the finger unravelled as well. Ruby felt a dull sense of relief about no longer having to look at it. 

There was a faint itch starting on the little toe of her left foot. 

Ruby decided to go to bed. There wasn’t much else she could do anyway. 

 

When she woke up the next morning, Willibald was still gone, but more red welts had sprung up across her body. Wool was sticking up from the welt on her leg, even though she had not scratched it. Ladybirds were gathering in the folds of the yarn that had once been her arm.

There was a knock on the door. Ruby bolted to the pantry, determined not to be seen in her state. In her rush, she stubbed the little toe of her left foot on a chair. She could feel it pull out and turn into yarn. She could hear the door open and her neighbour Camomile Burrows calling her, but soon, the door closed again and silence fell. 

It itched. Worse than Ruby had imagined an itch could be, but the prospect of scratching the itches was worse still. Ruby sat on a stool in the pantry, trying to come up with something to do as the ladybirds tickled across the red welts. She briefly considered knitting her arm back into shape, but quickly discarded the thought. There was no way she could knit with only one hand.

Finally, Ruby got up and went to the kitchen, making sure nobody was around. She got out her sharpest pair of scissors. 

It was just yarn, she told herself. And yarn could not feel pain. It was only yarn.

The pain was worse than Ruby could have imagined. She bit her lip and realised what a mistake that was when she felt yarn in her mouth. 

There was no blood, Ruby saw when the pain had abated enough for her to open her eyes. Just a mess of brilliant red yarn tumbled on the floor. The sight turned her stomach.

Ruby lurched to her feet but only made it to the hallway before she fell to her knees, gasping and shuddering as she gagged and retched up red wool. It tangled as it hung from her mouth joined by more and more loops of thread. The gag reflex disappeared suddenly. She must have unravelled the spot where it sat, Ruby realised detachedly. 

There was a soft sound. Ruby looked up. The neighbour’s cat sat a few feet away, its tail twitching. It must have slipped in when Camomile had opened the door. 

Its eyes settled on the wool dangling from Ruby’s mouth. It crouched down and its pupils widened.

Ruby tried to scream, but there was simply too much wool in her mouth.

 

“Mrs Ruby? Mrs Ruby, are you here?” Camomile peered into the hallway.

“Oh no, you naughty boy!” Her cat looked up at her lazily from the tangle of wool on which it had been snoozing. “How often have I told you to stay away from Mrs Ruby’s expensive wool?”

Camomile looked around furtively. “Mrs Ruby? Are you home?”

She chased the cat off the wool and gathered it up off the ground.

“What a mess you’ve made of it. But never worry, we’ll get it untangled and make a nice sweater out of it. Mrs Ruby has so much of it she’ll never notice it is missing.”


End file.
